Columbia man found dead inside his prison cell, South Carolina officials say
A Columbia man who was convicted on multiple rape charges was found dead in a South Carolina prison cell, Department of Corrections officials said.
The death of Mario Jerel Finklea is being investigated as a suspected suicide, the Department of Corrections said on Twitter Friday. Finklea was found in his cell at Lee Correctional Institution on Thursday, the Department of Corrections tweeted.
Both the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and Department of Corrections police services are investigating Finklea’s death, and an autopsy will be performed, according to the tweet.
In December 2005, Finklea pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, three counts of kidnapping, one count of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, and one count of second-degree burglary, Richland County court records show.
He was sentenced to serve 200 years in prison on the combined charges, according to court records.
Prior to his convictions, while he was being held at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center on one of the charges, DNA evidence examined by SLED linked Finklea to the sexual assault of a woman in a stairwell of a building in the 1900 block of Blanding Street, WIS reported.
Although he pleaded guilty to all eight charges, Finklea appealed the convictions in 2007, records show. His appeal was dismissed and his attorney successfully petitioned to be relieved as counsel after saying the appeal lacked merit, according to the records.
Finklea was last held at Lee Correctional, which is a men’s-only, high-security institution that houses more than 1,300 inmates, according to the Department of Corrections. Like other Level 3 prisons in South Carolina, Lee is “designed primarily to house violent offenders with longer sentences, and inmates who exhibit behavioral problems,” the Department of Corrections said.
It’s the prison where seven inmates were killed, and 17 more were injured, during fights that lasted more than seven hours in 2018. The prison is in Bishopville, about 50 miles east of Columbia.
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